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 t
seems that the FBI is having trouble getting information out of
Arab terrorist suspects. According to bureau officials, the problem
is that the suspects know that they won't be tortured, and so they're
clamming up. No doubt they are also counting on Dershowitz &
co. to defend them if things get tougher.
According to
some recent interviews, the bureau is thinking about extraditing
these guys to some friendly Arab countries — like Egypt and
Morocco — where interrogation is conducted more vigorously
than here. There is certainly something to be said for it, but before
we turn them over to the tender mercies of their Arab brothers we
ought to use the considerable resources of the country that has
the most experience, and the greatest success, in dealing with Islamic
terrorism. That would be Israel.
We are hampered
not only by the constitutional protections of the accused or the
suspected; we have very few interrogators who are fluent in Arabic,
conversant with Islamic culture, and sufficiently sophisticated
to understand the mentality of the terrorists. There are scores
of Israelis who have all these skills, and many of them are now
retired, and would be delighted to help us. Moreover, while Israel
has often subjected terrorist suspects to interrogation that would
not pass muster in the D.C. Court of Appeals, Israeli courts have
insisted on strict limits on acceptable methods. This is not the
case in even the most civilized of our Arab allies.
The use of
Israeli interrogators would have immense psychological advantages,
since the terrorists take it for granted that the United States
and Israel are simply two parts of a vast Satanic continuum, and
as soon as they see an Israeli asking questions they will immediately
assume that they have been sent to a hotter level of Hell. I suspect
that they will be more forthcoming under the changed circumstances.
Indeed, this
seems so obvious that I wonder why it hasn't been done already.
Can it be that here, too, the obsessive concern with preserving
our vast "alliance" at all costs has gotten in the way
of achieving our life-and-death mission?
Let's work
with our democratic allies first, and turn to friendly tyrannies
only as a last resort.
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